Damian “Pink Eyes” Abraham may get most of the attention but third guitarist Ben Cook is certainly the busiest member of Toronto psychedelic-punks Fucked Up.
In between the steady stream of singles with his day job, Cook has released his own army of EPs and seven-inches as Young Governor, the Bitters and Marvelous Darlings, the latter of whom gets the compilation treatment on Single Life.
Formed in 2007 and rarely playing live, the quartet released half-a-dozen seven-inch slabs of punked up power pop, in the vein of the Exploding Hearts and White Wires, each performed with the abandon of a band playing for its life. Cook proves to be a formidable singer; opener “I Don’t Want to Go To the Party” bubbles over with bratty energy while “Teenage Targets” shows-off his knack for complicated arrangements without losing the band’s visceral edge.
Cook and co split the record in half, with A-sides at the beginning and B-sides at the end, meaning that the Single Life’s back half is a tad weaker (emphasis on “a tad”) than its front. But the overall quality of material will leave listeners hoping this isn’t this group’s swan song.
Playing exclusively new material is a ballsy move, even for the most established artists. So when Toronto-based musician Eamon McGrath announced he’d be playing his forthcoming album, Young Canadians, in its entirety, in order, it seemed to indicate that he was either extremely confident in the new songs or lacked basic business sense.
The ploy seemed to pay off, though, as the bar was packed by the time McGrath and his three-piece band took the stage around midnight. “This is Young Canadians,” he announced as they launched into album opener “Eternal Adolescence.” While McGrath could be seen flitting about the bar chatting with friends and supporters before the show, once at the mic, the 23-year-old maintained an incredible focus, his raspy vocals cutting through his overdriven guitars.
The record’s more upbeat numbers, such “Rabid Dog” and the title track, were unsurprising crowd pleasers. McGrath’s years in Edmonton’s punk underground reared their head as he leaped and thrashed around the stage. His backing band did a good job of toughening up the slower, more delicate compositions, the lap steel/keyboard player seated to McGrath’s left doing and excellent job delivering some of the album’s more subtle textures.
“Auditorium,” a haunting paean to the concept of punk, proved to be the evening’s highlight before the band finished their set with album closer “Saskatoon, SK.” McGrath and co. started to pack up but were quickly coaxed backed to their instruments for a three-song encore that included covers of Neil Young’s “Like a Hurricane” and “Fuckin’ Up,” and ended abruptly when the drummer hopped over his kit to tackle McGrath to the stage floor.
The night proved that McGrath has the rare combination of both talent and ambition with a stellar album in the can, and the driven personality to deliver it to the masses. When Young Canadians drops at the end of next month, it’s hard to imagine the singer not graduating to larger venues as his star rises on the Canadian music scene. Best get in on the ground floor now — you’ll thank yourself for it later.
No matter how much we want them to be, Islands are not the Unicorns. Since Nick Thorburn and Jamie Thompson struck out on their own, the group have been viewed as an extension of the famed Montreal trio, rather than a separate entity.Thorburn, in particular, spent the band’s first three records simultaneously embracing and running from that expectation, but fourth time out finally finds his voice.
A break-up record written on a keyboard, A Sleep & a Forgetting features some of Thorburn’s most personal songwriting and it’s difficult as a listener to decide where the line between band and reality lies ― is “Never Go Solo” about his lost love or his music? Islands have always had an everything-and-the-kitchen-sink approach to their arrangements, but here the group hold back, peppering songs with splashes of horns, handclaps and what have you only when necessary, allowing individual tracks to stand on their own instead of smearing the album with a wall of noise. Their brand of quirky indie pop runs throughout, but the slower numbers are as effective as the upbeat tunes.
There’s a streak of R&B and even soul buried in these songs ― “This is Not a Song” could easily find new life as a torch song to a leaving lover. The press release explains that Thorburn started writing A Sleep last Valentine’s Day and is releasing it this Valentine’s Day to bookend the process. Gimmicky? Yes, but given the subject matter, not altogether inappropriate.
Evan Dando’s reconstituted Lemonheads line-up haven’t sparked his creative juices. Instead of new material, this latest release offers a collection of demos from the height of the band’s early ’90s popularity.
Recorded to four-track while on tour in Australia, Hotel Sessions is billed as the Lemonheads at their most stripped down. These 14 tracks find Dando, then still riding the first wave of alt-rock fame, laying down demoes for what would becomeCome on Feel… for the band’s manager. Come on Feel… would be their most elaborately produced effort, but its glossy style isn’t far removed from these surprisingly fleshed out sketches.
More than two-thirds of the final record is already here and most of the tracks sound more or less as they appear on the finished product. Dando delivers two songs that didn’t make the cut (“Superhero” and a track written by at-the-time bass player Nick Dalton, “And So the Story Goes”), while “Dawn Can’t Decide,” which Dalton also wrote, “Rick James Style,” “Favourite T” and “The Jello Fund” are all missing. More than anything, Hotel Sessions sounds like one of Dando’s solo acoustic tours of recent years.
What’s of value for fans is Dando’s commentary, as he intros each song, describing what each is about or his plans for it in the studio. Far from essential, Hotel Sessions is a glimpse of a once great songwriter in mid-process.
If Vancouver’s indie scene can be said to have a sound, it’s a sure bet that Said the Whale, Tegan and Sara and Mother Mother have had a hand in creating it. Therefore, it should come as no surprise that an act featuring collaborators and former members of those artists have bottled that sound into this surprisingly catchy album.
Andrew Braun and former Said the Whale keyboardist Laura Smith snagged Johnny Andrews and Shaun Huberts (aka Tegan and Sara’s rhythm section) to bring their compositions to life, giving the pair’s dark tunes an indie pop makeover. Manning the boards is Mother Mother frontman Ryan Guldemond, who shapes Braun and Smith’s voices in similar fashion to those of his group, turning tracks like “Empire” and “Weapon” into soaring anthems.
Several reviewers have already noted that Rococode sound more like the sum of their influences than an individual band. While that’s true, at this point it’s unfair to criticize the band for doing something so extremely well, given how many other acts can’t pull off a similar feat.
Chuck Klosterman once wrote that the Darkness would never truly make it in North America. The U.S., he argued, would never embrace the band the way England had, because their music was neither completely serious nor fully tongue-in-cheek. To America, the Darkness we just too damn clever.
His prediction proved dead-on. Despite scoring a minor hit with “I Believe in a Thing Called Love,” the Darkness never conquered stadiums here the way they did in Europe, but the band still managed to sell out their Toronto stop on their current reunion tour with a crowd that mixed both fans of their over-the-top image and indiscriminating hard rockers.
After blasting the room with Thin Lizzy’s “The Boys Are Back in Town,” the quartet hit the stage. Led by singer and sometimes guitarist Justin Hawkins, who apparently spent his time apart from the band growing some ill-conceived facial hair, they wasted no time whipping the crowd into a frenzy, knocking out “Black Shuck” and “Growing on Me” at a quick clip. Digging deep next withPermission to Land-era B-side “Best of Me,” it was clear the Darkness were keen to lean on that record’s massive success and eventually played all ten of the album’s tracks.
Hawkins’s vocals haven’t aged a day and the rest of the group (guitarist Dan Hawkins, drummer Ed Graham and bass player Frankie Poullain) laid down solid slabs of AC/DC-esque riffs. Though the Darkness lacked the edge they’d once had, the band worked their way through the set like seasoned pros, used to playing far bigger venues than this mid-sized club.
The band barely acknowledged their lacklustre sophomore record,One Way Ticket to Hell… and Back. And while the crowd welcomed both the title track and “Is it Just Me?” it was disappointing to not hear standouts “Dinner Lady Arms” and “Knockers,” a song about fumbling through what was once routine. At times, Hawkins looked as if he was doing just that, appearing a tad unsure what to do with himself onstage. But most of the time, he hit all the right notes, leading the crowd through vocal exercises like Freddie Mercury and even stepping off stage briefly to change into a jailbird-inspired unitard.
Perhaps inevitably, the Darkness have written new material; they played it and received a lukewarm reaction. New songs like “Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us” seemed to skip those clever double entendres that marked their best work and leaned on good-time rockisms (an album is apparently in the can and waiting to be titled and sequenced). It was clear that the crowd, while hardly hostile, was there for the old songs. Less expected was a surprising cover of Radiohead’s “Street Spirit (Fade Out),” which the band turned into the Randy Rhodes-era Ozzy rocker it was (apparently) always meant to be.
After delivering the goods with “I Believe in a Thing Called Love,” the Darkness retired for a minute before retaking the stage for their encore. Hawkins emerged with a third costume change, this time sporting in a Bovine Sex Club tee, much to the delight of the fans, and finished the night with “Love on the Rock with No Ice.” While it’s unclear where the Darkness have to go from here — musical progression never really seemed like their M.O. — it was clear the band and their fans are glad to be back together.
It’s a sad, but true fact that bands often have to seek recognition south of the border before finding success at home. For Toronto, ON, by way of Montreal, collective Yamantaka//Sonic Titan, a recent endorsement from Pitchfork has bolstered the small, but growing number of listeners ready to go to bat for them.
Blending the sonic experimentation of the Boredoms and Sonic Youth, heavy riffs of Black Sabbath and vocal harmonies inspired by Japanese opera ― they call it “noh wave” ― the eight-piece unit have crafted a unique sound for their debut, YT//ST. The band’s secret is their accessibility in the face of such esoteric influences ― few would believe that you could hum along to anything influenced by 77 Boardrum. The noh melodies, sung in both Japanese and English, suck you in, but it’s the crack production from drummer Alaska B that makes the album.
Singer Ruby Kato Attwood’s vocals remain crisp and clear amidst the pulsing organs, thundering drums and slabs of sludge-y guitars riffs as the record progresses in intensity. It culminates in the rhythmic groove and sonic freak-out of “A Star Over Pureland” before they finish listeners off with “Crystal Fortress Over the Sea of Trees,” the album’s most accessible tune.
An original record blending beauty and brutality, YT//ST should only find more supporters as its reputation spreads.
Second time out, Montreal’s Sonic Avenues stick with the formula that made their self-titled debut such a breath of fresh air, distilling old-school punk and garage rock into a joyous racket.
The arrangements are more complicated, but the hooks, which are what matter most when we’re talking about this kind of music, remain firmly in place. Big gang vocal choruses carry each track of failed romance: “Fadin’ Love” is a highlight, as is the title track. The album’s production remains as scrappy as the band’s playing, the treble-laden guitars buzzing above drums and vocals that sound like they were recorded in a meat locker.
The jump from Going Ga-Ga Records to Portland’s Dirtnap should raise the quartet’s already growing profile, so expect to hear a great deal more from these garage heroes.
Trying to sift through the legend of Serge Gainsbourg is no small task. In France, the man is considered a demigod, a raconteur of astounding wit who changed the face of music. Here in North America, he’s viewed more as a drunk lothario whose musical output conjures images of a triple-x Leonard Cohen. As with most things in life, the truth lies somewhere in the middle, not that Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life makes any effort to reconcile myth from man.
Made in France, director Joann Sfar (who also wrote the graphic novel on which the film is based) includes the quote “Gainsbourg transcends reality. I much prefer his lies to his truths” at the end of the film, making it abundantly clear which side of the divide he falls on. The film follows the usual biopic formula, showing key moments from the singer’s life. He grew up Jewish in Nazi-occupied France, becoming a disenchanted painter before following his songwriting muse.
Along the way, he romances a number of high profile women, Juliette Gréco, Bridget Bardot and Jane Birkin among them.Throughout the movie, Sfar shows how at odds Gainsbourg was with himself, showing a grotesque caricature following him throughout his life, questioning his decisions.
Some terrific performances from Kacey Mottet Klein as the young Lucien Ginsburg (his real name) and Eric Elmosnino as the adult one carry the film, along with Gainsbourg’s genuinely interesting life story, as he bounces from woman to woman, encountering some of twentieth century France’s most influential figures (Fréhel, Dali).
In terms of extras, the DVD includes the usual deleted scenes and making-of featurettes. Although occasionally funny, ultimately there is very little to elevate Gainsbourg: A Heroic Life beyond the level of run-of-the-mill biopic.
For long-time fans of Kings of Leon, Talihina Sky does what their fifth album, last year’s Come Around Sundown, failed to: bring the Oklahoma quartet back to their Southern U.S. roots.
The film follows the Followills (brothers Jared, Caleb and Nathan, and cousin Matthew) back to Talihina, Oklahoma for a family reunion. Introducing their extended family, including grandpa Leon (from whom they took their name), the film builds a pretty vivid picture of their rigid and insular Pentecostal upbringing.
Their rise to fame is told via interviews with band and family members (the lines are frequently blurred) and through archival footage – the clip of Nathan and Caleb singing hymns on television is particularly priceless. Their tales of drinking moonshine and fornicating with distant cousins paint the family as honest-to-God hillbillies and, at times, makes it difficult to take their lives seriously. Far more touching is the interview with their father, a preacher who led a double life that eventually tore the family apart and played a big part in steering son Caleb away from becoming a preacher himself.
Director Stephen C. Mitchell, a friend of the group, does a great job of painting a portrait of the band’s childhood, but leaves a massive gap in the story, specifically: how did these God-fearing children make the transition from religion to rock’n'roll? It’s hinted at but never really explained. Similarly, the story of their rise to fame leaves out the long-running disparity in popularity between Europe and the U.S., which only embraced these good-ole-boys after they transformed themselves into U2-esque stadium rockers.
Deleted scenes and home movies are included, as are two separate commentary tracks, one with director Mitchell, Nathan and Caleb, and the other with producer Casey McGrath, Jared and Matthew, which are really more of a chance for the guys to get together and goof on each other rather than provide insightful info. Still, it’s fun to listen to band members at their most off-the-cuff. Despite some omissions, Talihina Sky is a unique film that reminds us why we fell in love with Kings of Leon in the first place.
Damian “Pink Eyes” Abraham may get most of the attention but third guitarist Ben Cook is certainly the busiest member of Toronto psychedelic-punks Fucked Up.
Stalk me!